2: Makeover
by Evelyn Brightpaw
Summary: Takes place after Harley breaks Joker out of Arkham; since the animated Harley would look pretty incongruous next to Ledger's version of the Joker, her look had to be updated-and what better way than for the Joker to fix her costume and makeup himself?


Makeover

_What I need is a good defense,_

_Cause I'm feeling like a criminal…._

_- "Criminal," Fiona Apple_

The warehouse had definitely seen better days. That was the first thing that had occurred to Harley as she had parked her Volkswagen in the grimy alley, tucked behind a rusty old dumpster. There was a homeless man cowering against the graffiti-covered wall, peeking around the corner of the dumpster at them, holding a bag to his chest like a frightened squirrel guarding a nut. Harley had smiled and waved at him as she hopped out, and he had reacted like a squirrel would have – he clutched his bag tighter, twitched slightly, and watched every move she made. The little bit of Doctor Quinzel still inside her had been trying to diagnose him as the Joker strolled around from the passenger side; he had seen the bum immediately and gone scurrying toward him, grinning maniacally.

"BOO!" With a squeak of terror, the vagrant had jumped and run away, nearly dropping his precious bag in his haste. The Joker had hopped up and down and cackled before remembering his various injuries and wincing. Then he had grabbed Harley by the wrist and dragged her inside, up a set of dilapidated stairs and into the cobweb-draped upper room that had previously served as his hideout.

This was it, Harley had thought. She had gotten him past Arkham security, they had evaded police, they had managed to sneak back into the Narrows undetected, back to the Joker's most recent base of operations; now they could get down to business. Now he could get back to being the Clown Prince of Crime. Now they could be together. Oh, she had been waiting for this.

"…have to hire a whole new crew of goons…" the Joker was saying. He was roaming around the room, checking to see what remained of the munitions and supplies in his old stockpiles. "I don't know… hmm… _suppose_ they all got _taken in_… Prewitt Building…."

"Umm, Mistah J?" Harley began; the Joker glanced up at her for a brief second before turning back to the stacks of crates and boxes piled in the corner.

"_Buuuuuttt_… no, no – not Billy… no… too smart… have to get Billy back…."

He kicked open one of the boxes to inspect its contents.

"Mistah J…" Harley simpered, reaching out to touch his sleeve. "Come on, you can count your guns later! You're back in business, we gotta celebrate, savor the moment!" He turned away from her again, ringlets of green-tinted hair dropping down to hide his face as he kicked open each of the old crates on the floor in front of him. Small cascades of guns and ammunition fell out of them, and he nodded and murmured at the piles as if taking a mental inventory. Was he ignoring her? She tossed the idea aside vehemently. He was just distracted, that's all. She shuffled a bit closer.

"What's the matter, Puddin'? Aren't ya happy? You're outa Arkham now, and all your old stuff's still here, see? You can get right back to goin' after Batman!" She watched him walk over to an old table and pick up a fallen rickety chair from the dusty floor beside it. There was a box on the table top, covered in cobwebs, and he reached out a purple gloved hand and flicked it open. Harley sighed inwardly; he had such nice hands.

Cautiously, she sidled towards him, hands clasped behind her back and her most fetching look plastered on her face. "Doncha….. Doncha wanna thank me?" She smiled up at him, and this time he actually half turned. Through the curtain of fading green curls, she could see him staring at her, sizing her up, his left eyebrow cocked up quizzically. She grinned a bit wider, hopeful. The tip of his tongue had crept out to caress the scar tissue at the corner of his mouth, like it always did when he was thinking. Harley found herself staring at it, and felt her cheeks flush under her thick white makeup. All at once, he straightened and moved away from the table, and the sudden movement broke her reverie.

"Not while you're wearing that, I don't…." the Joker answered. Harley frowned.

"You don't like my costume? But I picked it out just for you! It's Harlequin. Ya know? Like my name?" He had started to walk back around the table and was loosening his tie as he turned to answer her.

"No… no, no, it's too… cartoony. Comic book-ish." Harley stuck out her lower lip and dropped her head. Of course, how stupid could she have been? Not that she could ever do anything right anyway. She started to whimper, but the sound caught in her throat as a thumb and forefinger covered in purple leather snaked out in front of her and took hold of her chin. "But… that can be… fixed." Harley looked up; the Joker's eyes wandered over her figure as his fingers walked down her chest to the white bib collar of her costume.

Without warning, he grabbed one of the fluffy pom-poms hanging from the collar and yanked. It ripped off, taking a whole section of the fabric with it. He did the same with the rest of the puffs, leaving the collar in shreds. "Mm, _much_ better. Much… better. Now, let's see…." He reached down and took her hands, and she tensed excitedly in spite of herself. With a jerk, he ripped the lace off her wrists, in the process doing away with the bottom third of her right sleeve. "Mm-hmm," he mumbled, and began humming absently as he scanned the rest of the costume. "Hmm, mm… hm-hmm… ya ta-ta-ta…." Slowly he moved his hand up her right arm, his middle finger tracing the seam in the cloth, stopping just below her shoulder. A quick jerk, and he had ripped a hand-sized gash; then he stepped back to decide on his next design alteration.

"Symmetry," he mumbled after a few moments, and he tore a hole in the costume's left elbow and in the thigh, just above her left knee. When he stood back up and looked at her face, his tongue was in the corner of his mouth again; after a minute or two, he pulled out his knife. Harley jumped instinctively, then watched in fascination as the Joker took the blade to her hat, chopping the pom-pom off the left side and shredding the right. He stepped back again. "It still… needs… something," he said, licking his red-painted lips. She watched his eyes trace her shape and silently wished it was his hands. "I know," he said finally. Harley drew in a sharp breath; the Joker flung his arms around her waist, and she felt the knife moving behind her as he cut loose a few of the suit's stitches. His fingers slipped into the hole he had made, and Harley felt a tingle shoot up her spine as the leather of his glove touched her skin. Then he pulled, and a long strip of cloth tore away from her torso, tapering off to come loose just above her belly button. She fingered the torn edges as the Joker rolled up the scrap of cloth and tossed it over his shoulder.

"Hands," he demanded, and she dutifully obliged by holding out both. His knife went to work quickly; in a few minutes he had sliced the tips from all ten of the gloves' fingers, and her own porcelain digits could be seen poking out of the red and black leather. The Joker kept hold of her hand for a moment, a slight grin playing around the scarred corners of his mouth. "Just one more thing," he tittered in a sing-song voice.

There was a broken mirror on the other side of the table, and as the Joker began rummaging in the old cobwebby box behind her, Harley wandered over to survey herself in it; she looked a bit like she had lost a fight with a chainsaw – and she sort of liked it. She wondered for a minute how on earth she was going to go about getting in and out of the body suit now with all the holes – it would be awkward finding which were the arm and leg openings and which were aesthetic tears. But it did afford a wicked view of her abs. She grinned at herself. Behind her, reflected in the cracked glass, she could see the Joker pulling things out of the box and laying them on the table: tubes of Halloween makeup. She started to turn and ask him what he had in mind, but he caught her and spun her back around. Harley watched in the mirror as he slipped an arm around her waist; the purple fabric of his coat slid across the bare part of her stomach, and it was all she could do to stay standing.

"Now…. Let's put a different smile on that pretty little face," he whispered into her ear. He hopped up to sit on the edge of the table, pulling her backwards towards him; his knees closed in on each side of her to hold her still, and the arm wrapped around her ribs tightened its grip until her back was pressing hard against his chest. Harley closed her eyes. She could feel his stomach swelling and shrinking against her lower back with each breath; the throb of his heartbeat vibrated through her shoulder to where her own was beating double time. He leaned around her so they were almost cheek to cheek, and a few tendrils of his hair fell down and brushed her face.

"And… here… we… go," he whispered, his breath against her neck making her shiver excitedly. She watched in the mirror as he pulled the glove off his right hand and reached for the makeup behind him. Then she closed her eyes and let him work. The paint was cold, but she felt only the warmth of his fingers as he pulled away her black mask and smudged on wide rings of dark face paint. His thumb came up and smeared the edges into her eyebrows, onto her temples, down over her cheekbones. It smelled awful, and she could feel it clumping in her eyelashes, but she did her best not to move. When he stopped to reach for more paint, she opened her eyes and looked into the mirror. Her eyes looked just like his. And she loved it. She grinned.

"Oh, Mistah J," she breathed.

"Shush…." he murmured, and as he shifted positions behind her, it was almost as though she could feel every muscle in his body move against hers. He reached his hand up to her mouth and dragged his fingers across her lips, continuing past the corners to streak the red paint up her cheeks. She allowed herself to imagine his fingers lingering there on her lips. A moment later, Harley realized that he had stopped and was staring at their reflections, his tongue just barely touching the scarred edge of his mouth.

"I think it looks great, Puddin'!" she heard herself saying. The Joker breathed in deeply, and as he exhaled, his warm breath covered her shoulder like a blanket, seeping in through her costume and making her stomach turn somersaults.

"No…. It needs to be smudged some more," he answered. He reached up to her face, stopped, and then turned her bodily until she was facing him. His knees were still locked around her waist, and now his breath mingled with hers as he took hold of her face roughly and brought it close to his own. Tangles of blonde-and-green mottled hair fell down to frame his face and brush her freshly painted cheeks. He tightened his grip on her chin. "I told you not to call me… 'Puddin'…" he muttered – and then before she could reply, his lips were on hers, warm, enticing, a kiss that was at the same time commanding and possessive, yet somehow curiously yielding. And it was, Harley thought absently as he pulled her backward onto the table, a very good way to smudge that red paint.

Harley woke up later that night with a stiff ache in her lower back from sleeping on the floor. Weak, dingy light from a nearby bar sign pooled lifelessly in through the far window, and she thought she could hear the noise that had awakened her – a trash-can-lid-noise, made probably by the homeless man getting over his scare and coming back to his accustomed spot. Harley was freezing. The new holes in her costume only added to the chill that was held against her skin by the slick fabric, and she didn't have anything to wrap up in. Sitting up awkwardly, she glanced over at the sleeping form of the Joker stretched out under his purple wool coat. He had pushed her off the table earlier, mid-make-out session, after she'd made the mistake of reaching up to touch his scars, and he hadn't touched her since. She had a strong suspicion that being pushed off the table had contributed to the stiffness in her back.

She should have known that touching his scars would have been a bad move; but she hadn't really been thinking very clearly at the time. Harley sighed. She understood the psychology. It would take him time, of course, to be able to move deeper into a relationship after all the emotional trauma that had turned him into the Joker in the first place. Whatever that was. She couldn't expect him to be willing to sleep with her on the first day out of Arkham. And he had every right to be upset about her touching his scars.

She just wished he hadn't pushed her off the table. Her hip was going to have a bruise.

Shivering for a moment, Harley looked around for something to sleep under, a bag or an old tarp or something. Nothing; with the exception of the Joker's stored boxes of ammo and the table and chair, the warehouse was empty. She had bags in the car – but to get there, she'd have to get even more cold and achy by going out into the night air without a coat. Harley pouted for a moment. Night One of her criminal adventures was turning into a very uncomfortable flop.

On the floor beside her, the Joker stirred in his sleep, and she watched him for a few minutes. She would have to convince him to take his shirt off for her tomorrow and let her check his stitches; the docs at Arkham had probably done a poor job anyway, and with all the movement and excitement of the escape, she was willing to bet he had pulled a couple loose. The ones above his eyebrow were holding, but barely. Harley bent down to inspect them, and had to resist the urge to kiss his forehead. Oh well, she thought. There would be time for lots of things tomorrow. Maybe sleep would help him forget her touching his scars today.

Shivering again, Harley cautiously lifted the very edge and sleeve of the Joker's wool coat and, making herself as small as possible, she inched her way under it. It only covered her about half way, but she could feel the heat coming off the Joker's body through her thin costume fabric, and she smiled.

She'd try again tomorrow.


End file.
